Report: GTX 870 Put Through Its Paces

[somebodyspecial]

Let's just hope NVIDIA prices these new cards "correctly". It's jarring to see system builders selling $3500-$4000 systems that comes with a $3000 Titan Z standard.

If they price them where you want them (lower), they'd be making as much as AMD. Just about nothing. They haven't made as much as 2007 in 7 yrs. When will people start to understand R&D costs a lot more today, and they CLEARLY are not charging as much as R&D has went up or they'd be making MORE money than 2007 NOT less. Right? Simple math people. If they are gouging us they should be making more money, but that's not the case because they now spend more on R&D than AMD. Their R&D has increased ~50% in the last 4yrs, but profits have been completely stagnant. They are PAYING to give you better stuff, but NOT reaping any benefits financially on the bottom line.

Is this gpu r&d or just general for all their products? Because they can be gouging us in the gpu segment to support all the rest of their pet projects' R&D. As far as GPU, AMD spends enough. They clearly know how to do a lot with what could be a little.

I guess you'd say general for both, but since they both make cpus, gpus,/socs I'd say it's pretty much a wash between them at ~1.2-1.3B each. AMD used to spend more, but it's been coming down 100mil/year for the last 3-5yrs. They're not making any money, so they had to cut it down unfortunately.

I hadn't actually checked the figures. So they aren't even that far apart. I am surprised AMD was spending that much more than nvidia in the past but I guess that was more to do with competing with intel in other areas. The common claim that nvidia spends more on innovating is clearly not so true. Their money might be going elsewhere (marketing, publisher deals)

If you call what AMD is doing vs. Intel competing OK. But both sides spend on marketing and publisher deals here.

http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-income-statement/?symbol=US%3aNVDA
NVDA 1.335B R&D
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-income-statement/?symbol=US%3aAMD
AMD 1.2B R&D. So actually quite a lot at 11%+ and NV isn't involved at all in the consoles. Not sure who pays to re-engineer the SOCS to die shrink on consoles (which always happens to cut costs over the 7yrs, usually 2 shrinks). But even not considering that 11.25% is quite a bit more spending on R&D for basically equal revenue companies (actually AMD brings in quite a bit more revenue, but doesn't make anything on it).

The larger point is, AMD no longer competes with Intel (200+w cpu vs. Intel 83w and they still lose?), and their 2009 R&D was 1.7B+. That's a HUGE cut to R&D right? 4yrs, 500mil. NV isn't spending on launching a new API either, which we already know costs a lot (8mil just to DICE, and how much to support it after?). With the maxwell power plunging, we know NV spent a good portion on R&D of the chips. We'll know soon if AMD has slipped. I expect AMD to slide more based on all the numbers and the previous launch having to wait for OEM's to put on their own HSF to fix the retail launch throttling issues. They are already showing signs of cutting corners and it's costing them. They had to need help to get FREESYNC off the ground (we'll see if they can get scalers to budge, NV failed here), while NV was able to do the R&D alone for G-sync and do it 6mo-1yr earlier. We have Gsync now, will there be any Freesync (if you can call it that anyway) by xmas? I doubt it. Again R&D etc costing them. We need a stronger AMD, and they need to charge more to start bringing in profits (sure I don't want that as a PC part buyer, but they need it as a company to survive). Nvidia will go right along with price hikes as Jen has said he desires that. Well duh, tired of making less money than 2007 I'd guess -7yrs of amd cutting prices has NV never reaching 2007 800mil income (ouch and is killing AMD - who just loses money mostly).

One other point, NV spends 435mil for selling, general & administrative, while AMD spends 674mil. I believe the selling part here, is marketing etc. You can also see from that page the 172mil AMD pays in INTEREST is killing their profits, leaving them with an 83mil loss for the year last year. While NV actually MAKES 6.7mil in interest adding to their income (the 3.7B in the bank makes something I guess). Balance sheets and earnings reports give a lot of clues about how the business (whoever it is) is doing. I like low prices too, but I'd be willing to spend a 5-10% charge for either side to ensure they both keep chugging along with R&D. We get far more power today than 5-10yrs ago, gpus are quite amazing deals today.

 

[hannibal]

So true... and if there would be situation with only two (Intell and Nvidia) or worse only one (Intel) gpu maker in the market... Well that would be just great (not)... for the customers. The GPU makers needs cheaper production costs to cut the prizes and that means smaller (and mature) production node, and at this moment there is not none (except by Intel...).

 

[somebodyspecial]

So true... and if there would be situation with only two (Intell and Nvidia) or worse only one (Intel) gpu maker in the market... Well that would be just great (not)... for the customers. The GPU makers needs cheaper production costs to cut the prizes and that means smaller (and mature) production node, and at this moment there is not none (except by Intel...).

To be honest, I'm hoping Qcom eventually enters the race (or ARM themselves with mali amped up) as they have ~40bil to fund a gpu race for a long time and like NV they can use them in desktops on discrete and socs. I cringe to say this, but Apple buying Imagination (they use them in every iphone, ipad etc, and they make under $60mil/year, clearly apple screwing these guys...LOL), and entering the gpu race would be good also. It's amazing imagination doesn't get more for their chips from apple considering they are a driving force in apple's performance across all of their mobile products (iphone,ipad,ipod). I was shocked when I looked at their financials. I mean apple pulls down $40bil, and these guys can't make 100mil of a main portion of the soc? Hmmm...They had to borrow money to buy mips leftovers. They used to make great gpus for PC's (ok, good ones). I used to sell Kyro2 to budget buyers, and they were a really great bang for buck purchase except for a few corner cases (Hardware T&L games IIRC, but playable even then). They just didn't have the budget to keep up with NV/ATI etc back then. If apple bought them, boom overnight a new PC competitor again. I mean with 140B in the bank (probably more by now) you could easily be in ANY gpu race on earth quickly

Qcom makes $6Bil per year and already does decent gpus in mobile, while NV can barely crack 500mil/year and AMD barely makes money if at all each year. Clearly Qcom/Apple can enter any time (assuming apple buys IMG.L to get all their IP for a billion or two...laughable to them). Apple has fabs now too, so again wise to buy IMG.L considering they use them in everything already. It would be nice to get 4 fully qualified GPU vendors in the race right? Not sure I consider Intel in there as they seem to just do OK and never push (i740, larrabee failure etc) and drivers from them for gpus/chipset integrated stuff has been sucko for years. I'd rather see Qcom/apple give it a whack at this point or even ARM. But ARM makes roughly what NV does, though no debt so they should be able to put up a fight also I guess. Mali seems to be behind a step or two but who knows what they could do amping up for discrete. I say the more players we can get the better... But STRONG players with no debt and cash in the bank or it's kind of pointless.

PowerVR4 with hardware T&L was supposed to come but they gave it up. Based on the Kyro2 4500 I really thought that chip would do very well. I'd like to see them try again with apple backing for sure, as the kyro 2 was very impressive in any NON T&L game. It rocked for the price and I never had customers calling about driver issues. So these guys know how to put together a chip and drivers in the PC world, they just didn't have the money to keep up. We know they still make great gpus (just far smaller for mobile now).

 

[1stcowgirl]

ya'll wrong! _ see the cuda count, see the core speed...
TH!S !S GTX860Ti !
Which once called.............. (gtx680)

 

[hannibal]

We know they still make great gpus (just far smaller for mobile now).

True, but the drivers are the real pain in the *** when dealing with PC market. There are many companies that could make decent GPU but not so many who are willing to make new drivers several times during a single year!

Intel is not willing to do it, so why would someone smaller. Ok Intel is making reasonable stable drivers for GPUs, but not upgrading them very often.

 

[anthony8989]

@somebodyspecial
You seem bring up Nvidia's 2007 profits quite a bit. You do remember that 2007 is around the time that both Nvidia and AMD were sued for collusion and price fixing their GPU products?

In the same email, Dan wrote:

"Both of us have spent the last three years trying to bring the perceived value of our products up to the level of Intel. The "GPU" category is clean and has served us well that way. We both have increased the price of our high end product several fold over the last 4 years while Intel’s high end prices have more than halved. Creating another category serves to work contradictory to that. How does one cleanly position it versus a GPU and a CPU?? It will tear down what we have both built."
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-amd-ati-graphics,6311.html

One could make the argument that those record setting profits were due in part to both AMD and Nvidia cheating their customers, their stock holders, and the law. I'm all for a free Amd fair market, but collusion and anti trust violations don't sit well with me.

Taking that knowledge into consideration, the downward slope both AMD and Nvidia have taken since getting caught in bed together could be necessitating a restructure of their business models. I think both Nvidia and AMD need to find a way to make themselves more relevant in today's economy. Though there's no doubt in my mind they are trying.

On a side note, I'd love to see Qcomm get into discrete Gpus . They won't.

 

[somebodyspecial]

We know they still make great gpus (just far smaller for mobile now).

True, but the drivers are the real pain in the *** when dealing with PC market. There are many companies that could make decent GPU but not so many who are willing to make new drivers several times during a single year!

Intel is not willing to do it, so why would someone smaller. Ok Intel is making reasonable stable drivers for GPUs, but not upgrading them very often.

Agree on the drivers (I'm looking at you INTEL!)...But everyone will have to make good ones for mobile or be left behind anyway Apple/Qcom already believe in vertical integration, so why not make desktop gpus (apple quits NV/AMD for macs etc then)? Now that mobile is getting it's act together with the api's (khronos, google etc helping) I think the job is getting a BIT easier, but maybe that's just an assumption You'd think with 9-12B/year Intel could write good drivers monthly or at least quarterly. It's kind of baffling really. NV/AMD can really hold them off with <500mil per year in income? Odd IMHO, but maybe they just can't get the brains to write good drivers, or AMD/NV already have them all...LOL. You're only really writing for DX/OpenGL these days if talking PC/Mobile. Driver teams are certainly seemingly hard to come by, if Intel is any indication I guess. That's kind of unfortunate as we seem to be stuck with two players and a fake (Intel). If either of the two main players fail miserably we'll really be up a creek quickly as buyers (price hikes immediately probably, though NV should be able to weather a few storms with 3.7B in the bank).

I think Intel would be raising prices even higher right now (haswell is $50 on top of ivy already) if it wasn't for chromebooks already taking 21% of notebooks causing Intel to keep a lid on the margins a bit even with a weak AMD. You don't want the same thing happening to your desktops in the next 12 months as 20nm, 64bit socs, AndroidL/Android extention pack etc roll out which could fight for the bottom just as chromebooks did (that is the point of them to some extent) and possibly land in PC like boxes. I guess we should be thanking the ARM armada for semi-decent Intel pricing still. Surely as far as they are ahead of AMD (based on the past) we'd be looking at $600-1000 for mid-high. I really hope with AndroidL and 64bit socs we see a PC LIKE box from the ARM side with discrete gpu options if desired (a PCIE slot inside to add if you get tired of soc gpu perf). I mean a complete box with everything you get in a PC, huge PSU, up to 32GB ram, TB HD's/SSD's etc etc. Real genuine competition again Get a billion or two of those systems floating around without Intel/MS premiums and app devs will follow the game developers we see now massively moving to where the HUGE numbers of units are. We just need something with more power, 64bit and discrete gpu options, and with huge unit numbers the apps will have to move just like games. Right now I can't see AMD having anything on the roadmap to make them enough money to ever get back in the INTEL cpu race. Their finances are quickly approaching the same outlook for gpus and still nothing on the board for mobile yet. They haven't put out an answer to the power levels of maxwell on PC yet either (pretty silent on AMD's side on this so far).

If Tonga was that good, I'd think AMD would be doing more than what seems to be a quiet stealth launch of a new chip. I'm sure it has lower power than the current chips, but if they made it to maxwell levels they'd be saying something in the public IMHO but I hope I'm wrong here. It would seem their financials are finally taking a toll, as lower R&D and income problems are hard to overcome on top of 172mil in interest on their debt yearly. Ideally we need them to get bought before they fall further behind on cpu and what appears to be gpu too now (but maybe Tonga is great, we'll see soon).

 

[killerswit2013]

So 870=780 and 880=780ti. What is the point???

780 is 250W TDP, 870 is 190W. Captain Planet smiles.

So 870=780 and 880=780ti. What is the point???

780 is 250W TDP, 870 is 190W. Captain Planet smiles.

this means the temperature rise will also be lower than 780?

 

[somebodyspecial]

@somebodyspecial
You seem bring up Nvidia's 2007 profits quite a bit. You do remember that 2007 is around the time that both Nvidia and AMD were sued for collusion and price fixing their GPU products?

In the same email, Dan wrote:

"Both of us have spent the last three years trying to bring the perceived value of our products up to the level of Intel. The "GPU" category is clean and has served us well that way. We both have increased the price of our high end product several fold over the last 4 years while Intel’s high end prices have more than halved. Creating another category serves to work contradictory to that. How does one cleanly position it versus a GPU and a CPU?? It will tear down what we have both built."
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-amd-ati-graphics,6311.html

One could make the argument that those record setting profits were due in part to both AMD and Nvidia cheating their customers, their stock holders, and the law. I'm all for a free Amd fair market, but collusion and anti trust violations don't sit well with me.

Taking that knowledge into consideration, the downward slope both AMD and Nvidia have taken since getting caught in bed together could be necessitating a restructure of their business models. I think both Nvidia and AMD need to find a way to make themselves more relevant in today's economy. Though there's no doubt in my mind they are trying.

On a side note, I'd love to see Qcomm get into discrete Gpus . They won't.

You're talking 2006 info, and DOJ didn't take action anyway:
http://www.cnet.com/news/justice-dept-closes-antitrust-probe-of-ati-nvidia/
"In December 2006, antitrust regulators began to investigate ATI and Nvidia, the two largest add-in graphics technology players, for possible antitrust violations within the graphics processing unit and cards industry."

So it was for actions PRE Dec 2006 and you have them guilty, while they investigate what was POSSIBLE antitrust violations". In early 2009 they closed after 2yrs investigation without taking action as the article says. That's NOT GUILTY, so come again? That's the problem with false lawsuits, some people still think you're guilty even when proven not a few years later.

"Nvidia confirmed that on Friday the DOJ notified the graphics chipmaker that it had closed the investigation and no action was taken."
And the class action suit itself, amounted to 850K each...LOL. Lots of collusion. More a payoff to just say go away, guilty or not. DOJ just gave it up period. They shouldn't have paid the class suit a dime, as DOJ had nothing, but most of the time people just pay off to get it over with and move on.

I bring up 2007 info (as in the year of 2007 which closed end of dec, and reported in Q1 2008), because neither side has made decent money since. I'd bring up AMD info too, but it's just awful how much they've lost so I can't really. And for all the price fixing "ASSUMPTIONS" (later proven as BS) they never made more than ~800mil. That is the point. If you want to keep getting new gpus, you'd better hope BOTH sides start doing better. AMD has lost $6B+ in 10yrs. So if they were price fixing, they sure never made much from it...LOL. ATI before bought by AMD never made over $68mil...ROFL. It seems to me it would be fair for both to raise prices, not as in fixing, but because they NEED MORE MONEY period. Pricing for what you get today isn't much different than it has ever been, the problem is you're getting WAY more perf for your money but they can't make up the R&D as well as before due to the rising costs of keeping up the race. No need to re-evaluate their business models, they just need to stop pricing each other to death. Well, AMD needs to stop trying, they will always lose that war with a no debt 3.7B cash company as the enemy, it isn't NV doing this to AMD, it's AMD attempting to do it to NV. Jen has said publicly he doesn't understand why they keep doing it and would be happy if they'd stop so his stock would go up (that's not price fixing, he just wants the price war over).

Your comment is kind of like these people whining about the black kid shooting going on now without knowing all the facts. They want a dead cop, or an arrested cop and then convicted at least or they'll riot. When reality is it would seem the cop KNEW (via a call in the car describing the kid) that the kid just robbed the place up the block (he'll testify he got the call and thus backed up the car to pursue, then got slammed and punched by the kid while in the car), and even from a voice heard on a reporters tape (black voice, thought the cop missed the first few shots because the kid kept charging) the kid was CHARGING the cop not surrendering. Even their gov said they need a rigorous prosecution...LOL. As if the guy is guilty already when evidence says he probably isn't (no shot in the back, already two liars in the first few days, autopsy showed that was a lie). Why didn't he say a rigorous INVESTIGATION is needed instead of PROSECUTION? The guy has a busted eye socket (fractured orbital) from the punch he took in the car, and the first 4 shots were in the arm, which seems to indicate he was trying to get the kid to stop charging rather than blatantly killing him (nice shots, cop must have been a good shot). Everyone is overlooking the evidence, which we don't even have all of it yet. Much like you here quoting the start of the case instead of the end with all the evidence included, which there wasn't any it would seem in the AMD/NV case (ati, whatever) so DOJ just dropped it 2yrs later.

Price fixing from 2002 to 2007? LOL. I see them trying to figure out how to raise the price of stocks (via more marketing and brand recognition), as $5 and $8 was really abysmal and IMHO not what the tech was really worth in a PC. The high end was a market they created for server products and workstations, so yeah those are still quadrupled today (look at at the price of a top quadro etc). No fixing there, just pricing what they market will pay as they use those for movies that makes millions or a billion each, etc. Not for playing games. I see nothing shady there, and DOJ didn't either.

"I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are the result of no respect."
Doesn't sound like price fixing, just trying to amp up recognition for the value of their products and stock. Also he never said they did it TOGETHER in your quote, just that he was describing what happened for both sides. There was no "thanks for helping me out here". It was a description of events of the past few years and realizing they'd been doing the same efforts. No different than sitting on stage together and saying "we've both been working on DirectX 11 drivers and getting overhead down" etc (just an example). That's not collusion, just realizing what is happening around you in the market.

You're making something out of nothing with that old case. What he's saying is Intel is valued more (brand), but without AMD/NV's product none of us would be having as much fun and graphics would be light years behind where we play today. Gaming won't work much at all without AMD/NV. Look at the SOCS today. CPU portions are PUNY, most of the soc is gpus. Again not valued correctly IMHO. Discrete GPU's are over 3x the size of Intel's cpus (Kepler ~561mm^2, compare that to haswell at 177). Who's doing more work to put fun on my screen? Talking about raising the marketing to get more brand recognition (and thus higher stock pricing) isn't like saying "hey, set your top gpu at $1000, and I'll do the same". Far different discussions. I didn't see price fixing talk in there but rather a discussion of their standing in the grand scheme of PC things. I'm not saying cpus don't have a place at the table here, just saying there was justification for what they were discussion back then. At best they are equally responsible for the power we use in our PC's in many ways, but back then GPU companies really didn't get any respect as their stock prices showed. From Sandy to haswell how much difference is there? Not a lot. The same can't be said for GPU perf from AMD/NV, which have some pretty massive gains, and even broadwell is talking 5% cpu gain...LOL. There are far more cases where you can get by with a lower cpu today than with a low-end gpu (which pretty much ruins gaming).

 

[ambientblue]

Maxwell architecture "GTX 800"series wont offer a huge step over GTX 700 , still were waiting till Pascal hits the shelves in 2016 or 4th quarter of 2015 . it presents a 3D Memory that offers several times greater bandwidth, more than twice the memory capacity and quadrupled energy efficiency of today's GPUs , it also has what so called NV-Link which puts a fatter pipe between the CPU and GPU , the flow of data between the CPU and GPU in this state allows data to flow at more than 80GB per second, compared to the 16GB per second available at current GPUs according to Nvidia .
so Maxwell is somehow a refinement to the GTX 700 , adds and sharpen some of the
the hardcore specs and functions of Kepler " GTX 600 " and Kepler Refresh architecture "GTX 700".

Wrong. The GTX 880 is comparable to the GTX 680, GTX 560 in terms of architecture. It will surpass the GTX 780 TI in terms of performance. The GTX 700 series were not refresh cards entirely, the 780 and 780 ti were part of the true Kepler kingpin GK110, the 880 ti will be the successor to that with GM210, and will absolutely destroy Kepler.

 

[anthony8989]

You're talking 2006 info, and DOJ didn't take action anyway:
http://www.cnet.com/news/justice-dept-closes-antitrust-probe-of-ati-nvidia/
"In December 2006, antitrust regulators began to investigate ATI and Nvidia, the two largest add-in graphics technology players, for possible antitrust violations within the graphics processing unit and cards industry."

So it was for actions PRE Dec 2006 and you have them guilty, while they investigate what was POSSIBLE antitrust violations". In early 2009 they closed after 2yrs investigation without taking action as the article says. That's NOT GUILTY, so come again? That's the problem with false lawsuits, some people still think you're guilty even when proven not a few years later.

Possible antitrust violations means there is evidence to support the claim that the two parties may have been colluding to price fix their products. Just because it was filed pre -December 2006 doesn't mean that it ONLY could have STARTED happening in that time frame - it just means that evidence surfaced and became apparent to the Department of Justice in that time frame. And the fact that they paid out 850k to "just make the DoJ go away" is your opinion. I see it as an admission of guilt. They had two options, pay the DoJ to go away right now - or let them keep digging, get warrants, wire taps and the fun really begins. Which would you choose?

I bring up 2007 info (as in the year of 2007 which closed end of dec, and reported in Q1 2008), because neither side has made decent money since.

Yes, and I brought up the lawsuit because it's coincidentally around the same time that both company's profits started to take a hit. If the DoJ files a lawsuit against you for collusion, and you're actually colluding, whether you can get away with it or not, you're going to stop colluding.

Your comment is kind of like these people whining about the black kid shooting going on now without knowing all the facts. They want a dead cop, or an arrested cop and then convicted at least or they'll riot. When reality is it would seem the cop KNEW (via a call in the car describing the kid) that the kid just robbed the place up the block (he'll testify he got the call and thus backed up the car to pursue, then got slammed and punched by the kid while in the car), and even from a voice heard on a reporters tape (black voice, thought the cop missed the first few shots because the kid kept charging) the kid was CHARGING the cop not surrendering. Even their gov said they need a rigorous prosecution...LOL. As if the guy is guilty already when evidence says he probably isn't (no shot in the back, already two liars in the first few days, autopsy showed that was a lie). Why didn't he say a rigorous INVESTIGATION is needed instead of PROSECUTION? The guy has a busted eye socket (fractured orbital) from the punch he took in the car, and the first 4 shots were in the arm, which seems to indicate he was trying to get the kid to stop charging rather than blatantly killing him (nice shots, cop must have been a good shot). Everyone is overlooking the evidence, which we don't even have all of it yet.

I'm not sure why you brought this up. It has literally nothing to do with the article or with what we're talking about. There was evidence enough for the DoJ to initiate a law suit. The DoJ reached a point where continuing to pry into this investigation would have been financially exhaustive and resourcefully draining. So they gave the party a buy-out option. Pay the price and stay off our radar or we can go further.

Much like you here quoting the start of the case instead of the end with all the evidence included, which there wasn't any it would seem in the AMD/NV case (ati, whatever) so DOJ just dropped it 2yrs later.

Price fixing from 2002 to 2007? LOL. I see them trying to figure out how to raise the price of stocks (via more marketing and brand recognition), as $5 and $8 was really abysmal and IMHO not what the tech was really worth in a PC. The high end was a market they created for server products and workstations, so yeah those are still quadrupled today (look at at the price of a top quadro etc). No fixing there, just pricing what they market will pay as they use those for movies that makes millions or a billion each, etc. Not for playing games. I see nothing shady there, and DOJ didn't either.

"I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are the result of no respect."

Doesn't sound like price fixing, just trying to amp up recognition for the value of their products and stock. Also he never said they did it TOGETHER in your quote, just that he was describing what happened for both sides. There was no "thanks for helping me out here". It was a description of events of the past few years and realizing they'd been doing the same efforts. No different than sitting on stage together and saying "we've both been working on DirectX 11 drivers and getting overhead down" etc (just an example). That's not collusion, just realizing what is happening around you in the market.

It sounds exactly like price fixing to me. Unfortunately the DoJ had to drop the case because this was more-or-less the only evidence they had of the collusion without digging deeper. All of the other conversations ( if they actually happened ) may have taken place over the phone or in person in private meetings. To acquire this information would require the parties to be followed, wire tapped, financial records seized. Very time consuming and expensive. All of this to nail a couple of GPU-peddlers. The DoJ has bigger fish to fry.

You do understand that just because a party is acquitted of a crime, it doesn't make that party universally innocent of the charge?
By your logic I could go out and kill someone, get charged and acquitted, and I'm innocent? Think about the Juice. Sure, legally and according to the government he's innocent, but he still killed two people. Now If you start defending OJ I'm going to have to walk away from the conversation Lol.

You're making something out of nothing with that old case. What he's saying is Intel is valued more (brand), but without AMD/NV's product none of us would be having as much fun and graphics would be light years behind where we play today. Gaming won't work much at all without AMD/NV. Look at the SOCS today. CPU portions are PUNY, most of the soc is gpus. Again not valued correctly IMHO. Discrete GPU's are over 3x the size of Intel's cpus (Kepler ~561mm^2, compare that to haswell at 177). Who's doing more work to put fun on my screen? Talking about raising the marketing to get more brand recognition (and thus higher stock pricing) isn't like saying "hey, set your top gpu at $1000, and I'll do the same". Far different discussions. I didn't see price fixing talk in there but rather a discussion of their standing in the grand scheme of PC things. I'm not saying cpus don't have a place at the table here, just saying there was justification for what they were discussion back then. At best they are equally responsible for the power we use in our PC's in many ways, but back then GPU companies really didn't get any respect as their stock prices showed. From Sandy to haswell how much difference is there? Not a lot. The same can't be said for GPU perf from AMD/NV, which have some pretty massive gains, and even broadwell is talking 5% cpu gain...LOL. There are far more cases where you can get by with a lower cpu today than with a low-end gpu (which pretty much ruins gaming).

Competitors are not allowed to have those types of conversations, otherwise they can be interpreted as collusion. What I'm suggesting is that since the companies got placed on the DoJ radar their profits have been falling. Obviously there is a thousand and one reasons, but perhaps their profits only got to where it was before because of collusion.

 

[somebodyspecial]

You're talking 2006 info, and DOJ didn't take action anyway:
http://www.cnet.com/news/justice-dept-closes-antitrust-probe-of-ati-nvidia/
"In December 2006, antitrust regulators began to investigate ATI and Nvidia, the two largest add-in graphics technology players, for possible antitrust violations within the graphics processing unit and cards industry."

So it was for actions PRE Dec 2006 and you have them guilty, while they investigate what was POSSIBLE antitrust violations". In early 2009 they closed after 2yrs investigation without taking action as the article says. That's NOT GUILTY, so come again? That's the problem with false lawsuits, some people still think you're guilty even when proven not a few years later.

Possible antitrust violations means there is evidence to support the claim that the two parties may have been colluding to price fix their products. Just because it was filed pre -December 2006 doesn't mean that it ONLY could have STARTED happening in that time frame - it just means that evidence surfaced and became apparent to the Department of Justice in that time frame. And the fact that they paid out 850k to "just make the DoJ go away" is your opinion. I see it as an admission of guilt. They had two options, pay the DoJ to go away right now - or let them keep digging, get warrants, wire taps and the fun really begins. Which would you choose?

I bring up 2007 info (as in the year of 2007 which closed end of dec, and reported in Q1 2008), because neither side has made decent money since.

Yes, and I brought up the lawsuit because it's coincidentally around the same time that both company's profits started to take a hit. If the DoJ files a lawsuit against you for collusion, and you're actually colluding, whether you can get away with it or not, you're going to stop colluding.

Your comment is kind of like these people whining about the black kid shooting going on now without knowing all the facts. They want a dead cop, or an arrested cop and then convicted at least or they'll riot. When reality is it would seem the cop KNEW (via a call in the car describing the kid) that the kid just robbed the place up the block (he'll testify he got the call and thus backed up the car to pursue, then got slammed and punched by the kid while in the car), and even from a voice heard on a reporters tape (black voice, thought the cop missed the first few shots because the kid kept charging) the kid was CHARGING the cop not surrendering. Even their gov said they need a rigorous prosecution...LOL. As if the guy is guilty already when evidence says he probably isn't (no shot in the back, already two liars in the first few days, autopsy showed that was a lie). Why didn't he say a rigorous INVESTIGATION is needed instead of PROSECUTION? The guy has a busted eye socket (fractured orbital) from the punch he took in the car, and the first 4 shots were in the arm, which seems to indicate he was trying to get the kid to stop charging rather than blatantly killing him (nice shots, cop must have been a good shot). Everyone is overlooking the evidence, which we don't even have all of it yet.

I'm not sure why you brought this up. It has literally nothing to do with the article or with what we're talking about. There was evidence enough for the DoJ to initiate a law suit. The DoJ reached a point where continuing to pry into this investigation would have been financially exhaustive and resourcefully draining. So they gave the party a buy-out option. Pay the price and stay off our radar or we can go further.

Much like you here quoting the start of the case instead of the end with all the evidence included, which there wasn't any it would seem in the AMD/NV case (ati, whatever) so DOJ just dropped it 2yrs later.

Price fixing from 2002 to 2007? LOL. I see them trying to figure out how to raise the price of stocks (via more marketing and brand recognition), as $5 and $8 was really abysmal and IMHO not what the tech was really worth in a PC. The high end was a market they created for server products and workstations, so yeah those are still quadrupled today (look at at the price of a top quadro etc). No fixing there, just pricing what they market will pay as they use those for movies that makes millions or a billion each, etc. Not for playing games. I see nothing shady there, and DOJ didn't either.

"I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are the result of no respect."

Doesn't sound like price fixing, just trying to amp up recognition for the value of their products and stock. Also he never said they did it TOGETHER in your quote, just that he was describing what happened for both sides. There was no "thanks for helping me out here". It was a description of events of the past few years and realizing they'd been doing the same efforts. No different than sitting on stage together and saying "we've both been working on DirectX 11 drivers and getting overhead down" etc (just an example). That's not collusion, just realizing what is happening around you in the market.

It sounds exactly like price fixing to me. Unfortunately the DoJ had to drop the case because this was more-or-less the only evidence they had of the collusion without digging deeper. All of the other conversations ( if they actually happened ) may have taken place over the phone or in person in private meetings. To acquire this information would require the parties to be followed, wire tapped, financial records seized. Very time consuming and expensive. All of this to nail a couple of GPU-peddlers. The DoJ has bigger fish to fry.

You do understand that just because a party is acquitted of a crime, it doesn't make that party universally innocent of the charge?
By your logic I could go out and kill someone, get charged and acquitted, and I'm innocent? Think about the Juice. Sure, legally and according to the government he's innocent, but he still killed two people. Now If you start defending OJ I'm going to have to walk away from the conversation Lol.

You're making something out of nothing with that old case. What he's saying is Intel is valued more (brand), but without AMD/NV's product none of us would be having as much fun and graphics would be light years behind where we play today. Gaming won't work much at all without AMD/NV. Look at the SOCS today. CPU portions are PUNY, most of the soc is gpus. Again not valued correctly IMHO. Discrete GPU's are over 3x the size of Intel's cpus (Kepler ~561mm^2, compare that to haswell at 177). Who's doing more work to put fun on my screen? Talking about raising the marketing to get more brand recognition (and thus higher stock pricing) isn't like saying "hey, set your top gpu at $1000, and I'll do the same". Far different discussions. I didn't see price fixing talk in there but rather a discussion of their standing in the grand scheme of PC things. I'm not saying cpus don't have a place at the table here, just saying there was justification for what they were discussion back then. At best they are equally responsible for the power we use in our PC's in many ways, but back then GPU companies really didn't get any respect as their stock prices showed. From Sandy to haswell how much difference is there? Not a lot. The same can't be said for GPU perf from AMD/NV, which have some pretty massive gains, and even broadwell is talking 5% cpu gain...LOL. There are far more cases where you can get by with a lower cpu today than with a low-end gpu (which pretty much ruins gaming).

Competitors are not allowed to have those types of conversations, otherwise they can be interpreted as collusion. What I'm suggesting is that since the companies got placed on the DoJ radar their profits have been falling. Obviously there is a thousand and one reasons, but perhaps their profits only got to where it was before because of collusion.

The DOJ wasn't paid a dime. It was an civil suit that was paid, nothing to do with DOJ. Not much point in discussing the rest when you clearly don't know the two cases (or that two existed). At any rate, DOJ found nothing. End of story. Civil crap can take years and be very costly, so paying doesn't mean guilty (as DOJ shows they were not). It just means you're not willing to risk some super huge payout because the little jurors hate BIG companies and want to stick it to the man no matter what when given the chance.

Toms said it pretty well here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-ATI-lawsuit-antitrust,6421.html
"Without admitting any wrong doing, it would appear ATI and Nvidia have avoided a possibly nasty legal case in which a potential guilty verdict may have been found. A settlement does not admit guilt, as a quick settlement could be beneficial even for an innocent party, though it still raises some suspicion. By agreeing to a settlement, it would seem ATI and Nvidia have chosen not to challenge the accusations made against them."

You pay just to avoid getting screwed, and get it over with. It happens all the time. These people likely filed JUST because they saw the DOJ move a few years earlier and hoped to get some quick cash. It usually works. Clearly they didn't have much faith in it, as they got just about nothing, and DOJ dropped their own investigation later, so again, just cash grabbing. If all you collect is 850K on 5yrs of vid card sales, you knew you didn't have a case or you'd fight for more. Cash grab. For less than a few months of work they walked away with a great paycheck so still worth it to the sharks involved unfortunately. Govt needs to start passing laws to stop frivolous lawsuits, forcing harsh penalties if you REALLY have no case. If the DOJ couldn't nail them (after YEARS of investigation), there wasn't a case for these few month paycheck punks.

 

[anthony8989]

You're making valid points , and I agree with your stance on frivolous law suits. However I maintain my belief that nvidia and ATI were price fixing at that time. Even the Tom's article points out the meaning of the payout could swing both ways. It's like pleading no contest and paying to make it go away.

It's my opinion they were guilty and that collusion helped boost profit margins - as collusion would.

Just my opinion.

 

[semitope]

Let's just hope NVIDIA prices these new cards "correctly". It's jarring to see system builders selling $3500-$4000 systems that comes with a $3000 Titan Z standard.

If they price them where you want them (lower), they'd be making as much as AMD. Just about nothing. They haven't made as much as 2007 in 7 yrs. When will people start to understand R&D costs a lot more today, and they CLEARLY are not charging as much as R&D has went up or they'd be making MORE money than 2007 NOT less. Right? Simple math people. If they are gouging us they should be making more money, but that's not the case because they now spend more on R&D than AMD. Their R&D has increased ~50% in the last 4yrs, but profits have been completely stagnant. They are PAYING to give you better stuff, but NOT reaping any benefits financially on the bottom line.

Is this gpu r&d or just general for all their products? Because they can be gouging us in the gpu segment to support all the rest of their pet projects' R&D. As far as GPU, AMD spends enough. They clearly know how to do a lot with what could be a little.

I guess you'd say general for both, but since they both make cpus, gpus,/socs I'd say it's pretty much a wash between them at ~1.2-1.3B each. AMD used to spend more, but it's been coming down 100mil/year for the last 3-5yrs. They're not making any money, so they had to cut it down unfortunately.

I hadn't actually checked the figures. So they aren't even that far apart. I am surprised AMD was spending that much more than nvidia in the past but I guess that was more to do with competing with intel in other areas. The common claim that nvidia spends more on innovating is clearly not so true. Their money might be going elsewhere (marketing, publisher deals)

If you call what AMD is doing vs. Intel competing OK. But both sides spend on marketing and publisher deals here.

http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-income-statement/?symbol=US%3aNVDA
NVDA 1.335B R&D
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-income-statement/?symbol=US%3aAMD
AMD 1.2B R&D. So actually quite a lot at 11%+ and NV isn't involved at all in the consoles. Not sure who pays to re-engineer the SOCS to die shrink on consoles (which always happens to cut costs over the 7yrs, usually 2 shrinks). But even not considering that 11.25% is quite a bit more spending on R&D for basically equal revenue companies (actually AMD brings in quite a bit more revenue, but doesn't make anything on it).

The larger point is, AMD no longer competes with Intel (200+w cpu vs. Intel 83w and they still lose?), and their 2009 R&D was 1.7B+. That's a HUGE cut to R&D right? 4yrs, 500mil. NV isn't spending on launching a new API either, which we already know costs a lot (8mil just to DICE, and how much to support it after?). With the maxwell power plunging, we know NV spent a good portion on R&D of the chips. We'll know soon if AMD has slipped. I expect AMD to slide more based on all the numbers and the previous launch having to wait for OEM's to put on their own HSF to fix the retail launch throttling issues. They are already showing signs of cutting corners and it's costing them. They had to need help to get FREESYNC off the ground (we'll see if they can get scalers to budge, NV failed here), while NV was able to do the R&D alone for G-sync and do it 6mo-1yr earlier. We have Gsync now, will there be any Freesync (if you can call it that anyway) by xmas? I doubt it. Again R&D etc costing them. We need a stronger AMD, and they need to charge more to start bringing in profits (sure I don't want that as a PC part buyer, but they need it as a company to survive). Nvidia will go right along with price hikes as Jen has said he desires that. Well duh, tired of making less money than 2007 I'd guess -7yrs of amd cutting prices has NV never reaching 2007 800mil income (ouch and is killing AMD - who just loses money mostly).

One other point, NV spends 435mil for selling, general & administrative, while AMD spends 674mil. I believe the selling part here, is marketing etc. You can also see from that page the 172mil AMD pays in INTEREST is killing their profits, leaving them with an 83mil loss for the year last year. While NV actually MAKES 6.7mil in interest adding to their income (the 3.7B in the bank makes something I guess). Balance sheets and earnings reports give a lot of clues about how the business (whoever it is) is doing. I like low prices too, but I'd be willing to spend a 5-10% charge for either side to ensure they both keep chugging along with R&D. We get far more power today than 5-10yrs ago, gpus are quite amazing deals today.

AMD does compete with intel as people still choose the fx series over the intel CPUs in many cases. I personally would not and did not but there is a case that could be made for one over the other. Where they do seem to compete properly is in the APU segment since their GPU side is still stronger there. They are clearly cutting down on their higher end CPUs and definitely on their chipsets for those CPUs.


I am guessing AMD's Tonga is more in the power efficient direction. Nvidias benefit there seems to be the higher frequency memory rather than using wider bus like AMD. My understanding is that the 384 bit 512 bit configs contribute significantly to their power consumption. If AMD took the nvidia route with memory (smaller memory on 256 bit) they would be more similar in that power and heat area I think.

 

[somebodyspecial]

You're making valid points , and I agree with your stance on frivolous law suits. However I maintain my belief that nvidia and ATI were price fixing at that time. Even the Tom's article points out the meaning of the payout could swing both ways. It's like pleading no contest and paying to make it go away.

It's my opinion they were guilty and that collusion helped boost profit margins - as collusion would.

Just my opinion.

Your opinion would hold more weight if the largest legal team in the world with unlimited finances of the US tax payer (the DOJ) had found them guilty instead of dropping the case. If anyone can find evidence against you (or heck make it up in the case of the New Orleans 5 cops incident which a judge overturned due to gross misconduct by DOJ with a 129 page report on their misbehavior), it is the DOJ. They took years and couldn't prove what you claim they did.

I maintain my conclusion, that if the DOJ can't find anything to convict you after years of trying with massive resources (more than ANY other legal team on the planet), IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. It's pretty clear they settled due to financial burdens over the long-term, not guilt in this case or the DOJ surely wouldn't have failed to nail them both. You're taking the side of a civil suit by some punks (a simple filing with no evidence or verdict shown), when YEARS of investigation by PROS couldn't prove the case. Odd, but OK...Whatever

AMD has lost $6Billion+ (billion with a B) in the last 10yrs and most of it was in 2007 & 2008 (3B+ loss for both years, the rest of the 8 yrs of that 10 basically did nothing overall). No profits. If two companies sit around discussing the value of marketing effectively it isn't price fixing. Intel wasn't selling GPU's, they were discussing the value of CPU to GPU and how to market more effectively, not trying to fix their pricing vs. each other. If AMD was involved in price fixing they weren't doing it correctly...LOL. We get cheap cards because they have that HIGHER end market now aimed at people that can afford to pay for what trickles down to us eventually. Without that we would not get advances at the lower end (us gamers) nearly as quickly as we do having it. It's kind of like Nascar, which brings in millions for car makers and the advances in car tech they get while doing it trickle down to us at home. The pro market does the same in gpus. As I said before neither side is getting rich, so not sure where you're really coming from on that front. If they were pocketing billions all of the sudden maybe there would be a point in saying that stuff but they are not. They have been engaged in a PRICE WAR for years, not price fixing. That is why the R&D can't be covered these days.

NV's 2008/2009 years would have looked much better anyway if it wasn't for the hits they took on bumpgate. Also EVERYONE had a great 2007 (the whole freaking market did), if you weren't debt riddled like AMD and making dumb business decisions right and left. Also PC sales were approaching a high, so naturally you should be making more at that time as most balance sheets in tech show at that time. IE, pull up Seagate, WD, Adobe etc and you'll see nearly everyone in the pc tech etc industry had a GREAT 2007 and/or 2008 (depending on how they state their FY, with the exception of memory makers). Microsoft had a huge year then too (17.7B, stagnate in 2005/2006 at 12.5B then up to 14B+ and 17B+ clearly growing up to the crash). Did the entire tech industry price fix in 2007/2008? No, it was just a great time for almost all players and profits and assets grew huge in that time. All 3 I mentioned more than doubled their assets and had huge profits in those two years. Check their 10yr summaries.